DSM V

This is truly the backwater of all blogs. If you have wandered here I welcome you and hope that there is something here that's interesting. I originally started using this blog to write my story, but I have found that to be quite tedious. If it is tedious to me it must be really tedious for you. I now plan to just post thought on living my life. I of course am transsexual, so my life does have some unusual twists to it.

As I write the American Psychiatric Association is in the midst of meetings in it's process of rewriting it's Diagnostic Manual which will be labeled DSM V. The current one is DSM IV. In the current DSM (Diagnostic Manual) people like me are labeled as having a psychiatric disorder know as Gender Identity Disorder. It is, according to the manual, a psychiatric disorder (or mental illness if you prefer.) The strange thing about this disorder is that there is no cure and the major treatment is with hormones and surgery. This is very strange for a psychiatric disorder.

So what is being debated is whether being transsexual is a psychiatric disorder or possibly just a normal variation of the human condition. I can tell you that I have been through a vast battery of psychological tests within the last 8 years and twice before that, similar tests. In all those tests I tested normal in most everything except for the fact that I am a bit more intelligent than average and a bit on the feminine side. In fact there is no diagnostic test for Gender Identity Disorder! People described with GID self diagnose most of the time. The ones who don't self diagnose are too young to do so.

The issue I believe has to do with the origins of transsexuality. This is something that has not definitively been determined. Until there has been such a determination there are many in the psychiatric world who are guessing at the cause and possible treatments. The situation is similar to the situation of people who are Homosexual. No one knows why they are that way, just that they are that way. The American Psychiatric Association gave up trying to "cure" homosexuality and they removed it from their sacred manual. The appropriate treatment for people who are transsexual is to help them live their lives. Often this means self acceptance and finding the appropriate medical treatments (hormones, surgeries, etc.) Pathologizing Transsexuals just adds one more burden to their already difficult lives. It also misleads psychiatric and medical professionals who come into contact with transsexual people. Counseling techniques for such individuals don't focus on cure, but on life management. I guess I am saying that the psychiatric community should remove GID from the manual and let transsexuals be treated by medical doctors and specialty counselors.

I'll get off the soap box now. Until next time.

God's Peace,
Shel

So much......

So much for big plans! I have been so busy that I have completely overlooked this blog. I am sorry about that. I will try to be more diligent in posting.

I have been living full-time as a woman for six years now. I had the Genital Reassignment Surgery four years ago. My life has somewhat stabilized, though I still have life issues. These issues are now more issues of just living. My marriage of 31 years has been over for five years. My ex and I are friendly, but no longer close. I am close with my children and I have a granddaughter. One son, the one with a daughter, now lives in Arizona with his spouse. I do not yet have any kind of close relationship. I am trying to settle into a Lesbian existence. Gender identity and sexual orientation are two different things. For some who transition sexual orientation transitions also. I thought this might happen with me at first, but I just can't even feel comfortable kissing a man much less anything more. I am Lesbian.

I have been thinking about what I might do with this blog and it strikes me that I might use it to think through some issues of life. I think this might be useful for my own thinking about my life has been and is about - possibly even will be about.
I have encountered all kinds of doubts and fears over the years and it might be a good thing to write some of these down and look back at them at some time. Possibly this also might help someone else going through similar things.

First let me make an observation. Transsexual people are not really very different from everyone else. This may be comforting, but it could also be disconcerting. I managed to survive a good number of years without any one else knowing I was trans. To the world I was "normal" whatever that means. This means that one never knows what lurks in the psyche of another person. We are all more alike in the fact the we are truely known only to ourselves. Public statistics indicate that the transsexual population is extremely small and that there are more male to female individuals that female to male. My experience tells me that this public perception is quite wrong. The populations of male to female and female to male may be equal in size. In addition there are far more gender variant people that can currently be statistically tracked. Most all statistics are based on surveys or reporting by medical/psychiatric professionals. They see only a tip of the situation. It may be far more common to have some gender variance than was ever expected. I believe that this may be behind people's fears surrounding transsexuals. I have no current way of proving this, but I do offer this as something to think about.

I am going to wrap up here for now. I am feeling cold and need to do something to warm up. Until next time, please be well!